


Fool's Job

by Nabielka



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Gen, Impersonation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 07:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13048929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: The Tavern Prostitute has taken up playing the role of Laurent. The Stableboy thinks this unwise.





	Fool's Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MildredMost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/gifts).



It started when the guards came back a few days later.

Jehan had worked there for two years, and could tell, even from across the room, how insincere the innkeeper’s welcome was. A paying customer he might receive without complaint at any hour; those who came at night to turn his inn all aflutter, accost Jehan himself, and finally depart without spending so much as a sol, merited by themselves distaste at best. But it could not be ignored that they had not embarked upon their errant on a lark, and however disgruntled he might have been, still he did not feel up to running the risk of drawing upon the inn the displeasure of some lord or other. 

He allowed them in; he called for Jehan. And so it was that with nary an apology, Jehan found himself once more face to face to face with them. This time they made no attempt at deference – certainly no one addressed him as _Your Highness_ – but he was at least dressed. He thought that perhaps these were not the same men as last time, but he had seen them in such poor light – and been so disoriented besides – that he could not be sure of it. 

One of them, with mousy hair and a faint scar across his cheekbone, took him by the wrist and dragged him into the light. His grip, though not painful, was tight; Jehan could not have twisted away, even when the man’s other hand came up to his chin and tilted it up. 

“Yes,” he said after a moment, drawing it out. “You’ll do well enough.” He let go, though only of the chin. 

It came to Jehan that the man wanted him not for the usual service, but for his resemblance to another. That too was not so unusual a request: many came in who pined for another, and were willing to pay extra to have Jehan act in a certain manner, or paint his face up. This was not however, the usual way of going about it. 

He opened his mouth to say so, just as one of the others said to the innkeeper, “Lord Maynart wants to see him. Has he debts outstanding with you?”

Lord Maynart was one of the surrounding lords granted authority over the area. Nesson-Elloy did not lie within his lands. Jehan looked at the innkeeper. Both of them knew this. 

Whether Lord Maynart did was unclear. It would not matter. There was never any chance of a choice, not for people like them. 

The innkeeper looked from the man to Jehan and back again. “No,” said he, which was true, “he always pays on time.”

“Good,” said the man holding him, taking a step back. “Have his effects sent to the keep.” He nodded to his companion, who fished a few sols out of his pocket and handed them over to the innkeeper. “For your trouble.” 

They had caught the light; Jehan could not see how much they thought he was worth. The man had not released him, but still he said, “I don’t want a pet’s contract.” Then hurriedly, for they were burly men, and he was being held by one still, and all the nobility he had met evidenced that same expectation that the world conform to their wishes and imbued too some of their loyal retainers with the same on their behalf, “I wouldn’t be a very good one.”

The one who had paid laughed. “It’s not that,” he said, and exchanged a look of obvious amusement with the man holding Jehan. They didn’t share the joke, only tugged him, albeit without hurry, to the door and out beyond it, where a carriage awaited them.

It was a simple one. Perhaps Lord Maynart was not rich, he or his ancestors having squandered their inheritance with pets’ gifts or fruitless endeavours, and shied away from the work that might have filled their coffers again. Or perhaps, thought Jehan as he was positioned in the carriage, not gently but with more carelessness than deliberate violence, he simply did not think the errand, whatever its purpose, worth the bother. 

They did not require conversation nor in the movement of the carriage, any other service. He was able to watch Nesson-Elloy as they left, watch the dark buildings he had seen each day, the streets he had walked, grow further and further away. Gone from sight was the baker’s where sometimes they had allowed him in to buy a bun before they had officially opened, when his work for the night was done; gone was the house where lived the physician who had never looked upon his body with lust, but only ever with concern over his poor skin; gone at last was the little tower with the clock that needed fixing. 

Nesson-Elloy had no clockmaker. There had been a collection for money to send for one from the neighbouring town of Aunis. He might never see it now. He looked back until it had faded into the distance, then turned back forwards. 

The roads turned unfamiliar, the trees thicker. He had never had much cause for venturing so far out from the town. But in truth they did not travel far. Before the sky had much darkened, they had arrived, but not at Lord Maynart’s keep, but at another tavern. When they alighted, one man went to give orders about the horses and the other inside with Jehan. 

To Jehan’s eye, it was less busy than the one he had worked at. There were some clerks hurriedly finishing up their meals and, closer to the fire, a group of travellers warming themselves up, their cloaks discarded already on the benches by their sides. The innkeeper, a balding man with a thick moustache, looked up as they entered, then hurried forward. 

He greeted the man with Jehan like an old business partner, unexpected but still welcome, and it took only a few words, exchanged where Jehan could not make them out, and the transfer of a small bag of money, before Jehan was being led upstairs.

It was a small room they went into, with a dressing mirror and a small window he could not by this time see much out of. The bed had been made, the walls were sparse of decoration, save for a few whorls in the wood of the mantelpiece. 

He sat himself down on the bed and turned to face the guard. There was no avoiding it; no place other to look; no cue, too, on what was wanted from him in this assignation. Anyone else would come to the inn for the houseboy, not summon him elsewhere, and the nobles had their own class of pets of which he was not one, nor, if the guards were to be relied on, were they trying to make him one. 

And still, this inn. It might provide discretion, but he could not see why that would be needed if you were a rich lord with his own keep. Had he been back in Nesson, he might have prepared again for such a customer, washed anew and perfumed himself. But there was nothing to hand. He had not even any other clothing to change into. 

“Someone will come to you tomorrow,” said the guard. He had not moved from the door, not made any other approach towards Jehan in the time since he’d come to the inn. Perhaps he considered him bound to Lord Maynart now, for his exclusive use, though Jehan himself had agreed to nothing, had made no commitments towards anybody. 

“Lord Maynart, you mean?”

“Hardly. His lordship has more important things to do than see to you.” He stopped, and looked Jehan over, pausing at his head and the spread of his shoulders. “They’ll bring some clothes too; you hardly look like him now.”

“Like who?” 

“Like Prince Laurent,” said the guard, and left Jehan there on the bed. 

*

The bed he had slept in these past two years had been more comfortable. Lying there in that new room, he woke too to the sound of doors closing in the corridors, to the sound of voices raised, and even the rain against the window. The bed was cool; in Nesson-Elloy he had had another blanket. He tossed and turned for hours, and tried to at least lie there with his eyes closed and rest if he could not sleep, and thought that that rest would not come the whole night. 

The guard’s words remained with him, and turning once again to his right side, he found himself quite affronted. They must have heard of the mix-up with the other guards, must have heard also of the blond pet they had thought might be the prince once they had determined he was not: that pea-brained lad at whom even Volo had laughed. 

At least Prince Auguste was rumoured to be good looking. Jehan could not be mistaken for him, for he was indisputably dead and had been these six years, but at least there could be no shame in such a comparison. They said the same of Prince Laurent too, but if that mousy pet looked anything like him, it could only be a rumour spread because of his position, fuelled by a belief that of course princes, being brought up in all luxury, must have the looks to match. 

Then again, the prince would have had the finest tutors available, not the few years in a village school with one teacher that Jehan had had. If he was as insipid as that pet – if that had indeed been him in disguise – then it was as great a waste of money as Jehan had ever heard of in his life. The thought that so great a fool was to hold a position of authority, was to have so great a say over the lives of others, rankled. 

The thought distracted him enough from the unfamiliarity of the room, from the sounds outside, from the fact that he was not quite warm. Sleep took him mid-thought and he knew no more. 

*

The clothing had been delivered while he slept, and lay at the foot of the bed when he woke. The trousers he found on the floor; he must have kicked them down in his sleep. He saw them only once he had sat up.

The sight of them unsettled him. There had been no lock to the door, here or back in Nesson, but Jehan was used to at least that little privacy. The clients he had to take back to his room, unless they had taken a room at the inn, in which case he went there, but other than that, his room was his own. The innkeeper did not come there. 

Here, it seemed, they would enter while he slept. He had nothing here to steal, nothing personal at all – he had had little enough even back in Nesson – but still the thought was unnerving. At any time he might wake up and find himself accosted; at any time he might wake up and find himself elsewhere.

But things like that might happen too in daylight. He took a quick glance around the room, then applied himself to the clothes. 

His own shirt, the laces loosened before sleep, was discarded easily. The one that had been delivered to him, the fabric soft to the touch, had stiff laces which gave his fingers more trouble. There was a waistcoat too, of shining silk, and a jacket of dark blue that was too dark for his colouring. 

Having dressed himself in all provided him, Jehan did not have long to wait. He was just debating with himself the likelihood of the money given from the guards to the innkeeper covering a light meal when the door opened again. The two guards from before, a new man who made them look like spindly twigs, and another man unknown to him entered, none of them having knocked. 

Jehan straightened himself up. He kept his eyes on them, but there was no move to grab him this time. Instead, the beefy man stepped forward, stuck out a hand and introduced himself. 

He was Osmund, from Patras. His role he did not explain. That task was left to the unknown man, who dismissed the guards with one look, and motioned for them to sit down together by the bed. 

He spoke without details, sparing too any explanation about the purpose of such a plan. That in itself did not bother Jehan. The ways of the highborn were frequently incomprehensible, and they cared deeply about things like how low one nodded in greeting and what colours someone wore, concerns which all hard-working persons had left behind in the schoolyard. Had the man explained his purpose, he doubted it would have been any more sensible. 

What was desired of him hardly suggested it. To dress in a certain manner, and show up here and there to hold pre-arranged conversations, to let himself as ordered be drawn into another’s arms and taken. Most of it he had been doing already, working in the inn and servicing clients. Why they in turn were making such a production of the whole thing was beyond him, but perhaps the prince, in his journey south, had left behind him a newly flourishing market of people wanting to see him demeaned, and willing to pay well for a whore who would help their imaginations along. 

The money they offered was very good. A contract was produced; he put his name down to it. It was rolled up and taken away, into Lord Maynart’s keeping, they said. 

*

A few days later, before anything very much had been done, he heard again footsteps outside his door. 

He did not bother to turn. In all likelihood, it would be Osmund, who had turned up a few times to talk both of casual matters and of their new roles. His new employer he had still not seen. 

“There’s some wine left if you want it,” he said, spreading the paste between his fingers. 

Whatever could be said for Lord Maynart, he paid better than Jehan had earned at Nesson, and upfront too. He had seen a physician and for the first time had paid the fee without the frantic calculations of how many clients he would have to take to make up the shortfall. For the first time too, the physician mixed up the paste needed immediately, and did not make him wait for days, which had scared off clients. He had dry skin that flared up in red patches along his knuckles and at the inside of his elbow. Bad enough that it could itch, but worse was how many men he had had to spread for to gain the means to keep it down, or else risk being thrown out on the street. Who, after all, would take the word of a whore that it was not contagious, and run the risk? 

“Thank you,” said the man behind him, in tones of amusement. “That’s very kind.”

It was not Osmund. 

Jehan twisted around, stood.

It was a man of similar age to him, though darker from the sun and broader of shoulder. He stood just inside the room, the door still open behind him. A labourer by the look of him, he was dressed simply, with a shirt of canvas cloth and a coat over it. Jehan was still in the fancier clothes they had brought him, and looking at him, felt suddenly aware of it, and knew not why. 

“What do you want?” he said. It was not a pet’s contract he had signed; there was nothing of exclusivity about it, only an obligation to be fucked so before others at his lordship’s choosing. The man, though not likely to stick out in a crowd, was not uncomely. 

The man’s eyes were heavy on him. He said, “I saw you earlier, and I’ve heard some talk in the town too,” and paused then, a muscle moving in his jaw. There was no coyness in that tone, no sense of impending flattery or other prompt to make Jehan play the coquet. Then he remembered that he wasn’t being paid for this conversation, that there was little prospect of it leading to anything, and wanted to laugh aloud at himself. But the man was still talking. “Actually, I don’t think you look very much like him.”

If the real prince looked anything like the mousy pet that had come to Nesson, it could only be a relief. Instead, he said, “Is that why you’re here? You wanted to see how I come to the real thing?” He let his eyes drift down over the man’s body and then up again. He was well built; there was much to appreciate. 

But instead of making any overture, the man said. “I came to warn you. I thought him unjust.”

“Warn me,” he repeated. The amusement was still there, but an edge accompanied it now. The words fell, incredulous, from his mouth. “I’m not new to this.”

There fell a beat in which the man processed this. After a moment he said, “At pretending to be the Prince?”

“At fucking for money,” said Jehan, then, considering him, found himself feeling indulgent. It was a fine night; he was not too tired. He said, “I’d been confused for him before, you know. When he went down south and quartered his garrison nearby. Waltzed off for a lark or something and the soldiers had to come looking for him.”

“Is that why you’re doing this then? Because soldiers came to bother you?” He had taken a step forwards, slight and perhaps not fully conscious. 

Jehan distrusted it. He had poor experience with being approached by men he was having a disagreement with. But though more muscled than he, the man did not look physically imposing, certainly nothing to some of the men he had seen in Nesson, nothing to the soldiers who had come looking for the Prince and addressed him as _Your Highness_. Besides, Jehan had never been too good at keeping his tongue behind his teeth. 

He said, “What’s it to you? Are you one of those adoring fools dreaming of throwing petals at his feet? Or are you going to tell me you’ve taken a break from ruling and come to be offended at me?” He gave the man a long look. “You’re better looking than the last man I heard claimed to be him, I’ll give you that.”

The man blinked. “Weren’t you saying that was you?” His mouth softened. “I don’t think you have much to worry about in that field.”

His cheeks warmed. He said, “No, there was also some lord’s pet after they worked out it wasn’t me. They seemed pretty muddled, honestly. If that’s the sort who fight, it’s honestly little wonder we lost Delfeur. Good at brutality and little more.”

He remembered it still, the shock of the attack, the greater shock of the loss. He had been young still, but on the cusp of manhood, old enough certainly to know what was going on and to feel caught up in all the emotions of the time. 

“Brutality,” repeated the man. “That’s what I came to you for. It’s a dangerous game you’re mixing yourself up with.” He took a step forward again, moved his head as though looking for somewhere to sit down. 

There was only the bed. Jehan saw him look from him to the bed and back again. His cheeks were a little pink. He made no move towards it. 

Still, they were closer now. The man smelt of horse and hay. A stableboy, he guessed. 

“Less dangerous,” said Jehan, “than the usual work. One client, not apparently diseased and not prone to violence.” Then, when the stableboy made to interrupt, for he had heard it before, “Yes, I know how he looks.”

“Like an Akielon,” said the stableboy, a furrow across his forehead. “Like the Prince-killer.”

That was the point. He did not much understand it either. Still, if someone wanted to pay him for his looks, there was little out of the ordinary in that, whether it came because they liked them or because they reminded him of another. If the high lords out of favour with the prince wanted to imagine they could see him fucked, it was a complicated pleasure, but not one that bothered him. They did not bring it to the point of violence. 

“He’s Patran,” he said instead, and wondered if therein lay the problem. 

The stableboy looked at him. There was no overt admiration in his gaze; he looked rather as though he barely saw Jehan at all. After a moment he said, “It’s not him I mistrust. How do you think the prince will react when he hears of this?”

“Bugger him,” said Jehan cherrily, rather doubting he ever would. “He must have greater troubles than whether someone else is getting fucked.”

“Perhaps,” said the stableboy, He spread his hands. “But I’ve met him, and I’d do my best to avoid him in the future. He’s got plenty of nasty men at his bidding and he’s not much better himself. I used to,” he hesitated, “do what you did, for money, as an extra. His Captain fucked me, and kept at it when I – when someone came in.” He turned his face away. “I can’t do what you do, not like that. But he had the bulk of your Patran and he held me down and I couldn’t –.” 

His mouth moved. Jehan, looking at him, at the hunch of his shoulders, knew not quite what to say. But there was no need; he was still talking. “He didn’t even pay afterwards, just spat at me and went to see the Prince. I thought he might force him to pay, or dock it from his wages or something, but they just said I should have gotten him to pay in advance. Like it was a joke.” He turned back then towards Jehan, and his mouth was a line, his eyes fervent. “I wouldn’t trust him to be understanding. It’ll be taken as a mortal insult, not just by him but by the Prince-killer too. There’s a rumour they’ve allied now. And then I think you will be in great danger.”

Jehan blinked. He said, hesitatingly, for lack of anything else, “You don’t even know me.”

“I’d warn anybody,” said the stableboy. “I had family still in Delfeur when Marlas fell.”

The words hung in the air. 

Jehan, discomfited, could not think of what to say. Everybody knew the horrors that had befallen Delfeur. Word about the prince, on the other hand, was scarce: save for that one journey south, he had spent his years in Arles. 

“I’m on a contract,” he said, in lieu of any proper answer. “It’s not a pet’s one, but you must know how it all works. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t just leave. They’d find me.”

“They might not bother,” said the stableboy. “Besides, I’m good with horses. I could help you get away.” He gave Jehan a long look. “Just consider it. I’m staying at the Bold Rooster for a few days, and I’ll leave a note of how you can find me later.” He reached for his pockets, pulled out a wad of crumbled papers, and inspected a few from both sides. Having apparently decided on one, a sudden thought made him look up. “You can read?”

“Of course I can read,” said Jehan with all the affront of somebody who had only been afforded a bare few years’ schooling. Bent down, the hair at the top of the stableboy’s head was revealed to be a little lighter. He had the perverse edge of suggesting the man get himself a straw hat instead of gallivanting around the country dispersing warnings. 

The note was passed, the man took his slow leave, exhorting Jehan to think it over. Jehan walked him to the door, brushed a hand against his coat and watched him walk down the hallway and then down the low winding steps of the establishment.

The paper he found himself staring at until he found in a sudden shiver that the room had grown chill and he with it. 

The stableboy had left his name: _Jacquet_. Jehan traced the mark with his thumb. It sounded friendly. He had smiled at him. 

Cursing himself for his foolishness, he tucked it then among his few belongings, where it would not fall out or be immediately found, but could not hide the thought similarly from his mind.

_I think you will be in great danger._

For now, with a thudding heart, Jehan only went to bed.


End file.
